Waygara Sawmill Sidings Nowa Nowa Part 1

While looking through the videos linked in the YouTube post below there were some great shots of the shunting at Waygara, but also an interesting movement from Nowa Nowa back the other way towards the township itself. I thought this was strange, I knew of sidings at Tostatree and Waygara, which are towards Orbost, but I knew of no sidings the other way.

then while looking for info on loading docks info that Gunzel has sent me I stumbled across some correspondence from APM in 1972 indicating that they had taken over the infrastructure of the Waygara Timber Company, including:

Timber mill site - Waygara
Timber storage and crane site - Waygara
Private Siding - Nowa Nowa
Loading Platform Nowa Nowa

Information on the loading platforms in the station yard being a current point of interest I read further.... and got more and more confused, until it finally all came together...

There were two more sidings in the Nowa Nowa area that I had no idea about!

In 1965 The Waygara Timber company indicated that it was amalgamating 2 of its four sawmills (The main one being at Waygara itself, another at Sardine Creek, which shipped out through Waygara and the Tostatree and Nowa Nowa mills which were to be rebuilt 1/2 mile north of the Nowa Nowa station.)

They requested the VR to build a new siding, at about 203 Miles from Melbourne, basically where the main town is, i.e on the other side of Boggy Creek from where the station is. This would help to relive some of the presure then being felt in the main Nowa Nowa yard (with smaller saw millers, the outwards limestone, inwards super all using the small yard).

These new sidings faced "down" towards Orbost on the nth side of the main line. Each siding was to be capable of holding 3 trucks, for a total of 6 trucks. These were shunted by a movement from Nowa Nowa (if you look at the videos one shows 2 T's departing with 3 wagons, crossing Boggy Creek).

This sawmill was an impressive contributor to traffic on the line, producing around 2000 million super feet of timber (9500 tons annual), of which 10% of the production was sleepers for the SAR.

In addition to the plans for the siding a plan for a loading platform was approved in 1966 and subsequently built.

In 1967 the siding was completed and placed into service. It was a very busy and profitable online business for the VR!

Now I need to look for info about Waygara and Tostatree sawmills!

Cheers

Rob